Experience and the Nondual Nature of Duality

All about the miracle that we're able to experience life.

Bart ten Berge takes a deep dive into the substance of experience and its purpose in being here in freedom.

Transcript

0:00

So tonight we're going to talk a little bit about experience. The miracle that we are able to experience, that we are able to experience life, that we have experiences. And having experiences doesn't mean that we have all kinds of amazing spiritual experiences. That's part of the possibility of what we can experience. But we can experience our hand. We can feel our hand. We can witness our hand. We can look at our hand. And we can feel the outside of our hand. And we can feel the inside of the hand. We can experience the movement of our hand. We can experience food. We can experience sound. We can experience ourselves talking. We can experience ourselves doing something. The dishes, vacuum cleaning, cooking. And when we kind of totally move into this non-dual quality of experiencing automatically as with all non-dual qualities we start to move into here and now and if you are relaxed in whatever experience we have this experience is a little bit a miracle Right now I'm talking and when I'm talking and I really start to experience myself talking and at the same time experience you all listening more or less. and I don't mean by listening, you know, obeying, because that's something else. Often we say you don't listen to me, you don't obey me. What I mean is hearing what I'm saying. That's a miracle. There is immediately this space, this space around me, this space inside me, this space in which I don't dance alone anymore, but we are dancing together. Connection. Also another non-dual quality. And when I give this example of experiencing, this blissful experiencing in the here and now, And of course we are talking partly about expression and we are talking about impression. So often we think that when we experience something it is only impression, it is only what we get, what is coming to us as an experience, you know the love of another, the sunlight on our skin, the wind through our hairs, the pulling of my beard, it's both, I can feel it and I'm doing it. but also us being active, us doing something, us giving expression which is incredibly beautiful when you look at it and of course when we move into the non-dual quality of experience both expression and impression as a dance, as a togetherness. And this brings connection, unity, togetherness, go on, go on, go on, go on. When we really move into experience, it's unconditional. conditional. It doesn't matter what kind of experience. You know, there is no agenda. There is no judgment. And even if there is a judgment, we can experience the judgment. But most of all, all that we are able to experience. That's one of the miracles of being alive, to have a physical body. To be able to experience physical life, to be able to experience our movement through time and space. Because the moment we move into the physical body we move in duality and we experience through the world of duality, through time and space. But there is a little trap there and the trap is when we start to experience in duality so often and so easy we identify with our experience you know what we express is what we call spiritual experiences it's of course defining us. There is this constant movement of life which gives a constant flow of experiences one after another. It's not only when we kind of you know see a golden Buddha or get blissed by the wind or whatever, that we experience something. We experience the air, the air moving our lungs, we experience that the movement of our bowels, we experience the other the crazy thing is that the other is not the other anymore. There is a connection. The other becomes part of us or part of our experience. But that doesn't mean that we are the other. That doesn't mean that we are the experience. That doesn't mean that the experience is defining us. So part of the idea that experience is defining us, that our impressions are telling us who or what we are, that our expression is defining us, telling us what we are, who we are. When you want to place the eye somewhere, place the eye in your awareness, in the observer who is able to experience, in our consciousness, in the witness who is able to see. And of course you know the depth of experience is coming forward when the witness and the observer are coming together. When awareness and consciousness are dancing as one. When every experience we have is coming to life as is life of its own. So that sounds very abstract. But we can feel the wind on our face, but we can also experience the wind, the wind on our face. That's already two experiences, it's where it touches us, but also the wind in itself which has a life of its own, which is out of control. We cannot tell how it will move, how it will touch us. We cannot even tell how our reaction will be as we feel the wind. So there is this constant miracle, this miracle of this live being which is aware and our environment which is alive as well. And the meeting position between this. This is where we experience in the meeting position of two life events. Every experience has a beginning and an end. No experience is forever. Even, you know, the experience of life as a beginning and an end. Birth and death. It doesn't mean that life starts with being born and life ends with being dead. Life is moving between it and life in itself is moving on, it's going on, as an experience. Of course when we look into it and we grab the experience of being alive, this is my life, by my sadness, my pain, my happiness, my bliss, my with my children, the animals around me, my friendships, my status, my job. Then basically what's happening is that we start to limit our experience. We start to limit what we are able to experience. We kind of start to define how we should experience. I should be lucky that I've got work. So when we are at work, we are lucky that we can do something. I should be happy that I've got a free day. I should be grateful for the love the animals are giving to me. I should be in awe of the beauty of the sunset. We limit our ability to experience. So we have this tendency to control experience. And of course you know when we control experience, experience becomes a little bit boring. It's not that it's alive anymore. It becomes predictable. We fill it in already up front. We go visit our parents and already we know what we will experience there. And then of course you know we get bored, we get upset. We limit ourselves, we go to a little little little little possibility of experience and life itself becomes quite gray we give ourselves already pre-made recipes how to express and we already dictated what the impression will be. So the miracle of the ability to experience gets lost and basically we're doing this because if we can predict the future, if we can control what we will respond to life. We do it in the right way, in a good way of course, you know, we will not be rejected, everything will be hunky-dory and we will will really make life safe. We don't get hurt, we don't get rejected. We do always the right thing. We respond in the right way. And we dictate the world around ourselves what impressions they are allowed to give us and what impressions they are not allowed to give us. How to express what is allowed and what is not allowed. This is so much based on fear. Fear for the depth of experience life can bring us. Fear for the unpredictability of experience. Fear that one moment you can be totally blissful and happy and the next moment disaster can happen. And that's true. That's life. But disaster is happening anyhow. And the more we have the tendency to control, to control our experience, the more in a way the pure, unconditional ability we all have to experience gets blocked. The more we move into second-hand experience, and we have lots of second-hand experience. Not only we create it ourselves because it's an experience we already kind of invented and we do it again and again and again but it's never the same. Sometimes when we eat chocolate we experience chocolate and when we experience chocolate, wow! It's a little party, how it melts in our mouth, the sweetness of it, the overwhelming yumminess. But then, you know, the next day we buy another portion of chocolate and we already decided that we're going to enjoy it the same way as we did yesterday. So we put the chocolate in our mouth, but we forget to experience. We just chew it and we think about our mother-in-law. And then it's gone. How is it possible? We ate this whole chunk of chocolate and we didn't even taste it. There was no experience with it. Because we think we've done it and we're grasping the same experience again. And this is the beautiful thing about experience, it's never, never, never the same. It begins and it ends and it's never the same. It's always unique. And even when you don't taste the chocolate, because you're thinking about something which has nothing to do with chocolate, so we are not kind of really relaxed in the non-dual quality of experience when we take the chocolate. Also this is an experience we have a tendency to reject because we want a chocolate experience. We don't want not to experience, we don't want that it's gone and we don't know what happened to it. Did I eat it? Did I don't eat it? Did somebody else eat it? Was it the dog? So to kind of expect what experience will come forward is a kind of second-hand experience. And so often we fill in how we have to experience something, how we have to express and what kind of impression we should have. And this can be positive or negative. thing like this, experiencing is so close to living, to being, to existing. So often, you know, when we get really, really bored with our daily life experience we take something which helps us to more freshly experience life. This can be some drugs or some alcohol but something which stimulates us and brings us in what we call altered state and in this altered state we let go of our agenda because you know we open ourselves up for what experience this pill or this joint or this glass of wine will bring us. So often with wine if we do it a lot we know if we take very regularly the same pill we know. We fill it in already and the experience is less. And of course, you know, we still try to get the experience of experiencing. Because that's what it is all about. To get the experience of experiencing. And sometimes with a lot of pressure. You know, in two days we have our holiday. And we are going to France. So we have to experience the atmosphere of France. We have to experience every minute of the day. It's really precious. We only have three weeks. So we have to live in these three weeks. So we have a whole agenda of what we will do, what one experience after another experience, this church, this museum, this camping, this food and we are so busy with the agenda that after a week we get a panic attack because this is not what we wanted, this is not what we are looking forward to We go from Harak to Kiri, you know, from one place to another place. And we didn't really relax, we are not really able to experience. The impressions we hoped to have are not coming. So we start to complain, you know, the wine is not exactly the same. You know, this camping is not like it was last year, it's different, it's not so much fun. The weather is not as good. So of course a way to escape this is going to experience India. So the first thing is happening, you come out of the plane and then this hot, hot, hot blanket is falling over you. amount of smells overwhelming too hot so happily our hotel has airco so we run to the hotel and sit in the airco ah my god too much experience And the only thing that we kind of need to do is to slow down, to take time, to experience the heat, to experience the blanket, to experience how you start to sweat, how it's difficult to breathe, to experience how the body will adjust itself after a while, to take time and space for it. To experience the different part of the earth under your feet, the difference of atmosphere. as it is in India. So to be able to experience what is important is to relax. feel safe. And of course you know when we look to feeling safe there is two sides to it. Feeling safe to express, feeling safe to let comfort out of yourself as a response on whatever impression you have. Because you know expression in a way is happening by itself. Action is a reaction. If it's not from the mind every action is a reaction on an impression. Experience is both impression and action. It's also the miracle to see that something is coming to you and your body will react. Your mind will react. It's like a conversation. If you want to have a real conversation with somebody, it's only possible when you're hearing the other person. When you experience the question or the remark or the story of the other person. When you really let it in, when you experience it. And then by itself a reaction comes forward, which beautiful, amazing, and then on this reaction, you know, the other person has an impression and a reaction is coming forward, and this all in our ability to experience, in our conscious awareness, and then the experience, you know, when you are in conscious awareness in the now experiencing unconditionally to experience the conscious awareness of the other person, the meeting position, the blend, the togetherness, the unity which comes forward as a possibility it's all experience. So one of the difficulties is often we have been dictated how to experience ourselves and how to experience others in certain parts of life. If it is taste or if it's understanding or genius, smell, sight, hearing. People tell us how to experience. Apples are healthy and yummy. And if you experience differently, you know you're not okay. The color red is a strong color. You have to be careful with red. Classical music is beautiful. And especially this piece of music is beautiful because everybody loves it. If you express like this, you never get married. If you express like this, you never will make money. You will not find your place in society. In a way when you look to it most of the conversations which seems to have some depth are dictating experience. It's not that we are sharing experience but so often we are dictating experience towards each other. This is fun. This is bad. This is painful. This is difficult. This is great. This you should enjoy. Now you need to be sad. You should be really, really upset. It's not normal that you're not upset. Everybody is upset when something like this is happening to you. So in this way we try to come to a form which is understandable, in which we are acceptable, in which we have a feeling that we belong, that we are part of, because we all experience the same. We can understand each other. We agree. We are with each other, not against each other. This is really blocking our ability to experience to the depth. And there is something so sad about it. Because often the more violent the situation is, the more upset the other becomes, or the more upset you become. And you are not able to experience your own upsetness fully, or the upsetness of the other fully. We try to prevent it. And we are investing in each other's craziness. Oh, oh, oh, if the other gets hurt because of something I express, then I'm really, really bad. So it's better to kind of let the snot just go over my upper lip and not blow the nose. Because it's so horrible for the other person. Contractions of experience. And we give the impression to the other that the behavior which sometimes is really bizarre is normal, is good. That's the reality. So we feed each other in kind of alternate realities. which are based on agenda, which are based on not to experience, not to experience too much, not to experience the depth of ourselves. Realities which are based in avoiding connection with part of what is there in our lives to experience, with part of our lives so we keep each other in illusion actively by avoiding and I am not saying that on purpose you need to upset another person but it is very important to be truthful to yourself truthful to your own experience. Both in impression and expression, in impression and response. That's the response of my body. That's the response of my spirit. That's the response of my essence, my soul. And that's the response of all of them. the impression I get, this is what I am experiencing so much pain, in that we are not allowed to have our own experience that our own experience is denied, is not affirmed we have to kind of, you know, to control our old parents to a point where they will admit that you had some pain in your childhood. It's like we need their authority to allow the experience which is there anyhow to get this information because it was denied so much, not allowed. So the only authority which can help you to affirm your own experience is yourself. Am I allowed to be happy? Am I allowed to be sad? Am I allowed to be in pain? So when I'm going to a birthday party I am not allowed to be sad, I will be a party pooper, we don't want that, I will bring down the whole atmosphere. When you allow yourself to be sad we allow ourselves also to become maybe happy, angry, upset, we don't know. But this is the world of experience, we don't know, it's the beginner's mind, we really don't know. And that makes life so interesting. Worse living, less boring. So there is this ecstasy in allowing yourself to experience what is there to experience. Nice, comfortable, beautiful, amazing, disastrous, impossible. All of those colors life is bringing us. All these possibilities. And none of these possibilities is defining you. It's just an experience. The miracle is not in the experience. But the miracle is that we are able to experience all of that. And maybe that's the reason why we are here. That's the reason that we got this gift to live in time and space. That's the reason that we got this gift to live in time and space. you